Saturday, September 15, 2007

MOSCOW. Sept 14 (Interfax) - The Russian Orthodox Church supports the European model that provides for the voluntary teaching of religious studies at schools while considering positions held by religious groups of differing faiths.

"I also hold that one should not introduce a compulsory study of religious subjects including the subjects with skeptical attitude towards religion, the subjects that view religion as an exclusively social phenomenon invented by humans," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, told Interfax.